Campus Chatter – July 2, 2018

Spain ratified the Treaty of Tordesillas today (1494). Also, Bogdan III the One-Eyed became Voivode of Moldavia (1504), Daniel Greysolon de Du Luth was among the first Europeans to see the headwaters of the Mississippi in Minnesota (1679), Thomas Savery patented the first steam engine (1698), Congress approved a resolution to sever ties with Britain, although the wording of the Declaration of Independence would not be finalized for two more days (1776), Vermont became the first American territory to abolish slavery (1777), Denmark Vesey and 35 other slaves were hanged in South Carolina for plotting a slave rebellion (1822), Inácio Luís Madeira de Melo surrendered his Portuguese army, ending the Siege of Salvador and the Brazilian War of Independence (1823), African slaves led by Joseph Cinqué took over the slave ship Amistad (1839), Victor Emmanuel II moved his capital to Rome, completing the Italian Unification (1871), Charles Guiteau shot President James Garfield, who would die of infection over two months later (1881), Congress passed the Sherman Anti-Trust Act (1890), England issued Guglielmo Marconi a patent for radio (1897), the first Zeppelin flew over Lake Constance near Friedrichshafen, Germany (1900), at least 50 and as many as 200 black men, women, and children were killed by white rioters in the East St. Louis Massacre (1917), attempting the first equatorial round-the-world flight, Amelia Earhart and navigator Fred Noonan were last heard from over the Pacific Ocean (1937), the Golden Pavilion at Kinkaku-ji in Kyoto, Japan was destroyed by a fire (1950), the first Walmart opened in Rogers, Arkansas (1962), President Lyndon Johnson signed the landmark Civil Rights Act (1964), North and South Vietnam were united into the Socialist Republic of Vietnam (1976), Rodrigo Rojas and Carmen Gloria Quintana were beaten, burned, and left to die in a ditch while protesting Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet (1986), Vicente Fox Quesada was elected the first President of México from an opposition party, the Partido Acción Nacional, after more than 70 years of continuous rule by the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (2000), the first AbioCor self-contained artificial heart was implanted (2001), Steve Fossett became the first person to fly solo and nonstop around the world in a balloon (2002), the G8 nations and South Africa hosted the Live 8 concert (2005), 230 people died when a tanker truck overturned and exploded in South Kivu, Democratic Republic of the Congo (2010), and the International Astronomical Union named Pluto’s fourth and fifth moons: Kerberos and Styx, on the same day 42 people died when a magnitude 6.1 earthquake rocked Aceh, Indonesia (2013). And 19 people died when a Pakistani Army train derailed as a bridge collapsed at Gujranwala, on the same day 178 people died when the passenger ferry Kim Nirvana-B capsized and sank in the harbor of Ormoc, the Philippines (2015).